Finding Vivian Maier Archives

And the rest of the business for the Oscars. First part’s here; second part’s here.

Best Visual Effects

Will win – Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

I could see this going to either Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Interstellar instead, but Dawn of the Planet of the Apes features significantly more horseback-riding apes firing machine guns, always the “x factor” in decisions like these.

Should win – Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy probably doesn’t have the show-stopping visual bells and whistles of the other nominees, but a lot of its charm is wrapped up in its ramshackle look and feel (not to mention its raccoons wearing people clothes). I wasn’t as crazy about the movie as some folks I’ve read or spoken to, but it’s entertaining and ingratiating, in part because of those pleasingly modest effects.

Not nominated – Noah

For reasons I still can’t fathom, Darren Aronofsky’s Noah seems completely forgotten already, if not outright mocked or dismissed. That’s too bad – it’s a smart, searching examination of faith and doubt disguised as an epic disaster movie of literally Biblical proportions. Its spectacle aspect, though, is impressive both in the CGI renderings of a fallen world, and the way in which Aronofsky deploys those effects, in service to the story rather than crowding it out.

Best Documentary

Will win – Virunga

Laura Poitras’ Edward Snowden doc Citizenfour has a lot going for it (on paper at least; I haven’t seen it) – it’s ripped from the headlines, by most accounts pretty gripping, and offers an unprecedented look at history as it unfolds. Finding Vivian Maier introduced audiences to an artist who deserves more attention, which I could see holding a certain amount of appeal to voters. But Virunga, which is focused on conservation efforts and attempts to save Africa’s oldest national park (in Democratic Republic of the Congo) from oil exploration and its wildlife from extinction, is going to pull an upset here. It’s an “issue film” that seems very much in line with past winners like 2005’s March of the Penguins, 2006’s An Inconvenient Truth, and 2009’s The Cove, and, while not everyone might support Snowden or care particularly about street photography, I doubt there are too many who come down on the “anti-endangered species, pro-fossil fuels and environmental devastation” side of the debate, at least among those voting. Having Leo Dicaprio as executive producer probably doesn’t hurt, either.

Should win – Abstain

The only nominee I’ve seen is Finding Vivian Maier, and I did not care for it at all.

Not nominated – Jodorowsky’s Dune

David Lynch’s adaptation of the cult classic sci-fi novel Dune is famously divisive, and had a tortured journey to the screen. Fascinatingly, iconoclast filmmaker (and very excitable man) Alejandro Jodorowsky tried for years to get financing to make it before Lynch came on board. It never happened, of course, but in Jodorowsky’s Dune we get to see what might have been, by way of his elaborately constructed and lovingly preserved book of images and drafts for the project. On camera, he supplements these with descriptions and digressions, all delivered with his inimitable manic enthusiasm – he must be one of the few people in the world who can talk with so much gusto and good nature about a passion project that didn’t work out. Frank Pavitch’s doc isn’t the film Jodorowsky wanted to make, but it’s probably the next best thing.

Best Supporting Actor

Will win – J.K. Simmons, Whiplash

There’s no drama here. J.K. Simmons is the crazed heart and questionable soul of Damien Chazelle’s stellar Whiplash – his enormously intimidating, morally dubious music teacher dominates every scene he’s in to such a degree that the “supporting” part of the award almost doesn’t apply. Never has the phrase “Not really my tempo” struck fear into so many hearts. J.K. Simmons, a veteran character actor with a ton of great performances to his name, is basically even odds to win, and he deserves it.

Should win – J.K. Simmons, Whiplash

Yep.

Not Nominated – David Koechner, Cheap Thrills

E.L. Katz’s Cheap Thrills is a gratuitously violent, depraved, and brutal portrait of class struggle and how far we’re willing to go to get by. It’s also hilarious, mostly because of David Koechner (probably familiar to most viewers as Packer on the American version of The Office). Perfectly cast, he brings the same boorish behavior from that role to this one, except things go into much darker territory. It’s a dark night of the soul all around, but Koechner finds plenty of humor in the darkness.

Best Supporting Actress

Will win – Patricia Arquette, Boyhood

Like J.K. Simmons’ predicted win, this seems pre-ordained. And like Simmons, Arquette deserves every bit of the acclaim. Her performance is nuanced, rich, utterly believable, and, in one incredible scene where she takes stock of her own life and reflects on the passage of time, heartbreaking. Arquette has never been better – she’s never been close to this good, as far as I know. She’ll win, and should.

Should win – Patricia Arquette, Boyhood

Yep.

Not nominated – Uma Thurman, Nymphomaniac Vol. 1

Lars von Trier’s controversial Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 is lighter in tone than the second installment released here in the U.S. (and better for that very reason), but it can still be pretty grueling. In the middle of all the sordid business, Uma Thurman shows up for about four minutes and leaves the biggest impression of anyone in the film. Walking her kids through our protagonist’s apartment, where she’s entertaining Thurman’s unfaithful husband, she carries on in the most bitter, cringe-worthy, and hilarious monologue imaginable, followed by a breakdown that’s like the emotional version of a car wreck – it’s impossible to look away. When she fake-cheerfully asks the children if they want to see “the whoring bed,” it’s simultaneously appalling and funny … a lot like the movie itself.

And the rest

I didn’t bother with several categories, either because I didn’t see enough (or any) of the nominees or because I didn’t have much to say. But for the sake of completeism (and so I can laugh at how wrong I was tomorrow), here are basically random, largely unfounded predictions for the rest:

Best Animated Short – The Dam Keeper
Best Costume Design – Into The Woods
Best Live Action Short – Aya
Best Documentary—Short – Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1
Best Makeup and Hairstyling – Foxcatcher
Best Original Score – The Theory of Everything
Best Sound Editing – American Sniper
Best Sound Mixing – Whiplash

By all accounts, Vivian Maier was an eccentric and complicated woman, a mystery to those who knew her best (not many) and an outsider artist in the truest sense – a gifted street photographer who hoarded her own work, but continued to snap images everywhere she went in her paid job as a nanny for a series of families. Maier is a legitimately fascinating subject, and she deserves a much better movie than Finding Vivian Maier, John Maloof’s perplexingly well-regarded, Oscar-nominated, feature-length humblebrag about his discovery of her work.

This is not to say that Maloof’s story – and Finding Vivian Maier is most definitely Maloof’s story – is without interest. While working on a book about Chicago history, he frequented auctions and estate sales, looking for old negatives and images that might be of use. One purchase, a trunk belonging to the late V. Maier, delivered something else: a real-life mystery.

Filled with thousands of negatives and rolls of undeveloped film, along with miscellaneous odds and ends that had been methodically collected and stored for reasons unknown, it sent him on a slightly obsessive mission to discover more about the photographer. His film details that journey, presenting some of Maier’s photographs throughout its standard, creakingly deployed talking heads format, in which former employers, charges, and acquaintances provide their (often conflicting) recollections of the woman herself, and various art historians and gallery owners chime in with their thoughts on her work. It’s as standard as a documentary can be, aesthetically, and not distinguished in any particular way visually.

But aesthetics aside, one overarching question haunts the film: why would someone go to such great lengths to document their time and place through their considerable artistry, only to lock the photos away? Maier was intensely private, according to everyone, and very possibly mentally ill to some degree, but that’s still an extreme thing to do – thousands of pictures taken, tens of thousands maybe, rolls of undeveloped film, a lifetime of considered observation, for no one to see. That her medium was photography, which assumes a viewer, only underscores the strangeness.

It’s a great question, but it’s undercut by another nagging one Maloof can’t avoid – does he have the right to display them now that she can no longer object? A friend of Maier’s (one of the few she had, it seems) states it plainly: “If Vivian were alive, she never would’ve allowed this to happen.” Maloof deserves some amount of credit for allowing that statement to be aired, and he wonders about it himself later, but it has the feeling of someone who confuses raising an objection with answering it. He is, after all, now the mouthpiece for his accidental find, and, one assumes, this has been pretty lucrative for him. At its worst, Finding Vivian Maier plays more like a promo for “a Maloof exhibition, coming soon to a gallery near you!” than a heartfelt appreciation of a forgotten (or never known) master.

That queasiness never subsides. On the other hand, the images themselves are striking – focused on the ignored and passed-over denizens of Chicago slums, on crime scenes, poverty and surreal juxtapositions, on the range of small joys and kindnesses that she encountered just walking the streets, they paint an indelible picture that’s simultaneously raw and empathetic, violent and full of grace. All were shot from chest-level, with the camera that hung around her neck, and so often give the impression that the figures in them are looming above you. The fact that she herself asked no one’s permission to photograph them, stealing their images on the sly, adds another wrinkle – she stole unguarded moments from strangers, and now a stranger has stolen them from her, to put on a stage she probably would’ve rejected.

When he’s not breathlessly recounting his own tenacity in getting the pictures to the world, Maloof does often come across as a true believer, and I don’t doubt that he is. But in its first moments, the film clues you right in. An off-camera Maloof asks one interviewee whether he would’ve done anything different in retrospect, and he replies, “I would’ve bought that trunk instead of you.”

They both laugh. I doubt Vivian Maier would’ve joined in.

China Girls, Death Proof, and the Hidden Face

Old News: Old Noise Edition

Old News: April 1, 2019

Nicolas Winding Refn, Marginalia, and the Deaths of Cinema

And now, let us praise Kanopy

Warren Sonbert and the Relief of Anti-Narrative

The World Is Ending and It Doesn’t Matter

The Best Films of 2018

Madeline’s Madeline: An Unclassifiable Panic Attack Maybe-Masterpiece

Shoplifters Steals Moments of Wonder from the Mundane

Burning and Forgetting What’s Not There

Alien, Musicology, and Reading Soundtracks

Shocktober III: Halloween 2018 Edition

Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery Traumatized Schoolkids in 16 mm

Shocktober 2018 II: Another Reshockening (of Horror)

Häxan is a movie made by a movie character

Shocktober 2018

Unprofessional! Spring Night, Summer Night

The Wild Boys: A Luddite Robot Conversation

Kusama: Infinity Expands Beyond The Canvas

Finding Vivian Maier

The Oscars are bullshit, and we’re all fools: Picks #3

Finding Vivian Maier (John Maloof and Charlie Siskel, 2014)